


my youth i pray to keep

by blooddrool



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Smut, Panic Attacks, thats pretty much it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-04-01 11:36:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13997469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blooddrool/pseuds/blooddrool
Summary: “What’re you thinkin’ about?” Jesse asks.  He picks his hat up off the man’s chest and hangs it on the bedpost.  He swings his leg over Reyes’s side, straddles his hips, and Reyes’s hands fall immediately to his waist.Reyes says, “Just you,” and Jesse’s ears turn red but he doesn’t know why.  It’s not like this is new.





	my youth i pray to keep

**Author's Note:**

> jesse has one and a half panic attacks in this fic, so here's your warning.
> 
> this fic could either be independent or within the same universe as [come together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958361) and [take](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11449083). it's up to you.

Jesse watches a kid die like it's the first time he's ever seen death.

 

It’s a hostage situation.  Absolutely textbook. Easy trade.  Underfunded terrorist cell — they hand the girl over, some senator’s daughter, Jesse wasn't paying attention.  They get their money.

 

But the bills are bad, because of course they are.

 

She has messy pigtails, a dirty t-shirt with a cartoon puppy on the front.  Pink. She's very small. Jesse’s the one who catches her when she runs to them, tells her she's goin’ home to her daddy.  He holds her on his hip and she clings to him, cold and hungry and scared. She might be the same age as little Fareeha.

 

“Get her outta here,” Sheppard says.  Jesse is already turning away.

 

He feels it all go wrong before he sees it, like ice in his gut, a drop in altitude.  One of the goons starts yelling. Jesse looks over his shoulder just in time to see a gun.  Then a lot of guns.

 

Jesse has always had a quick draw, but this time he ain’t quick enough.

 

They shoot the little girl right out of his arms.  Her head busts open like a stomped-in jack o’lantern and she goes limp before she hits the ground.  Just meat. Jesse feels hot and wet and sticky, all down his shoulder and shirt, on his face. Jesse stares into her head and doesn’t feel a damn fuckin’ thing.

 

Nothing but the weight of his revolver on his hip.

 

He remembers thinking that he’s gonna kill ‘em all.   


 

———

 

He wakes up in the infirmary, except he doesn't think he was ever asleep.  He realizes he’s cold and understands why when he looks down. There’s blood everywhere.  Jesus. Must’ve left one hell of a trail when he walked in here.

 

“...to sit down.”

 

“What?” he asks.  His voice sounds different.

 

“You need to sit down, McCree,” it’s Angela, right in front of him.  How long has she been there?

 

She puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes him, makes him sit on one of her crinkly paper cots.  The room is small and white, private.

 

“I need to undress you, McCree, yes?” Angela tells him, and Jesse thinks that that’s fine.  She doesn’t need to warn him. Her fingers wrap under his hoodie, touch his skin, and he flinches away.  Like she’s zapped him. He tells himself that it's just Angie. Girl wouldn't hurt a damn fly.

 

He tries to help her get him out of his clothes.  He lifts his arms when she brings his hoodie up, but they feel cold and strange, like they're underwater and the rest of him isn't.

 

“‘M fine, Angie,” he says, but then she looks at him funny.  Like he’s grown a second head or a fifth limb. Isn’t he fine?  He feels fine.

 

Except that he doesn’t.  He doesn’t feel much of anything, just cold and weird.

 

“You are in shock, McCree,” Angie says.

 

“Oh.”

 

“Do you know what happened?”

 

He does.  There was the trade, and the little girl.  He saved her, held her in his arms. She was safe.  The wettest parts of her head slapped against the concrete before he dropped the rest of her.

 

Jesse barely has time to shove the Doc away before he’s vomiting between his knees.

 

———

 

Reyes sits on the edge of his hospital bed.  Genji stands behind him, fidgeting like he doesn't know what to do with himself.

 

Reyes takes his beanie off, holds it in his hands, and asks, “Do you want to talk about it?”

 

“No,” Jesse says.

 

Reyes says, “Okay,” like it's exactly what he expected, and stands.  Slick as ever, he slides his stupid hat under Jesse’s sheet, snug against his hip, and pats him on the shoulder.  He leaves with the suggestion of a smile.

 

Genji stays behind.  He pulls the visitors chair away from the wall and settles into it, kicks his legs up on Jesse’s bed, folds his arms.  He doesn't even blink when Jesse whips out Reyes’s hat and pulls it down onto his head, nearly to his eyes. They wouldn't let him have his own damn hat; he feels naked without it.

 

“Would you like to talk about it?” Genji parrots.

 

“I won't tell him but you think I’ll tell you?” Jesse replies, but he's not mean.  He's tired. He wants Genji to leave and he wants Genji to stay. He wants Reyes to come back and hold him like a fucking child.

 

Genji says nothing and Jesse sighs, “Didn't think I could get  _ got _ anymore.”

 

“You are only human, McCree.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Jesse sinks down in his uncomfortable bed, “Fuckin’ sucks sometimes.”

 

Genji’s mask is up, but Jesse can see his eyes start to smile.

 

———

 

He only spends one night in the infirmary, but it's enough to make him itch for a shower and seriously miss his own bed.  He makes his way to his room, slow and slightly less-than-steady. His hands don't shake but he feels like they could start any second.

 

He pushes his door open and Reyes is there, on Jesse’s bed with his ankles crossed and his hands folded, Jesse’s cowboy hat over his face like in an old western movie.  Like Indiana Jones, like John Wayne.

 

“You coulda just left me a fuckin’ card,” Jesse says, “‘Get well soon, Jesse, we love you’.  Signed, Overwatch and Co.” He walks to his dresser and pulls out a set of clothes. He debates over all his clean underwear.  Might end up taking everything off later anyways, and Jesse hates doing laundry.

 

“Didn't think you could read, otherwise I would have,” Reyes replies, pushing Jesse’s hat off his face to look at him.  He looks tired. More tired than usual.

 

The corner of Jesse’s mouth starts to curl up, unbidden, not unwelcome.  “You piss off Angie?”

 

“She called me overbearing.”

 

“Probably were.  Shower with me?”

 

“Your shower barely fits me alone, kid.”

 

“Fair ‘nough,” Jesse says, gathering his clothes.  He hesitates before he asks, “Be here when I get back?”

 

Reyes looks… Fuck.  Reyes looks less like  _ Reyes  _ and a lot more like  _ Gabriel _ when he says, “Yeah, Jess, I’ll be here.”

 

And it makes Jesse’s belly twist up.  He ducks his head and slips into the bathroom.  He closes the door behind him less gently than he intends.

 

The shower helps, though.  It helps a lot. He lets the water beat down on his shoulders and feels more human than he has since he…  Since the mission. Jesse turns his face into the spray and swallows down bile.

 

He steps out of his modest little shower and towels off.  His hair drips and turns cold against his scalp, and he leaves puddles on the tiled floor.  He considers his underwear again. Black boxer briefs, utterly underwhelming, but he stands there, naked and damp, staring at them like they might give him the answer to it all.  To life, the universe, everything.

 

He does not put them on.

 

He shimmies into his sweatpants instead, leaves his shirt folded on the back of the toilet.  He runs his hand through his hair to make it lay straight and brushes his teeth. When he bends down to spit, he sees blood mixed in with the off-white froth.  He rinses his mouth, leans on the counter. His reflection in the mirror looks washed out. He looks sick,  _ ill _ .  Jesse feels a sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to put his fist through his own pale face.

 

Jesus.  The bathroom is suddenly far too small.

 

When he opens the door, the cooler air hits him like a bucket of water on a hot day.

 

Reyes is exactly where Jesse left him.

 

Jesse’s hat is on his chest now and he’s scratching at his beard with his thumb, staring at the ceiling.  Jesse wants to know what's on his mind.

 

“What’re you thinkin’ about?” Jesse asks.  He picks his hat up off the man’s chest and hangs it on the bedpost.  He swings his leg over Reyes’s side, straddles his hips, and Reyes’s hands fall immediately to his waist.

 

Reyes says, “Just you,” and Jesse’s ears turn red but he doesn’t know why.  It’s not like this is new. It’s not… 

 

Fuck.   _ Fuck. _

 

Jesse squeezes his eyes shut.  There’s a feeling in his chest that’s rising up to his throat, like an air bubble in a bog.  He wants it out, he wants it  _ out _ .  He just wants to feel normal.  So he twists his ass down into the seat of Reyes’s hips, because that’s  _ normal _ , that’s so  _ good _ .  He thinks that maybe if he can get Reyes to fuck him, the knot in his throat will go away.  Like Reyes can force it out his mouth from behind. Shit.

 

“Jesse,” Reyes says, and his hands clamp down on Jesse’s hips.  His hands are warm against his skin but its not encouraging. It’s barricading.  “Stop.”

 

It’s that hold on him that Jesse immediately knows he can’t break, but, God, he wants to.  He tries, squirms a second and gives up, and he wants that knot in his chest  _ gone _ .  He wants to sleep and not have nightmares, but he knows he will.  He wants all  _ kinds _ of things and suddenly they’re all rushing around his fucking head like a swarm.  He was swimming in the dark but now he’s surfaced and there’s the sun and the waves and a circle of birds and bits of floating seaweed and dead fish and blood in the water and the birds are cawing and cawing and screaming at him because he’s holding on to a little pink dead girl like a life preserver  _ and the birds want at her _ .  They want at her eyes and her brain because it’s all spilled out into the water and her face is mixed around, all uneven like a stroke victim, because her skull is in pieces under her flesh.

 

_ Her head busts open like a stomped-in jack o’lantern and she goes limp before she hits the ground.  Just meat. _

 

_ Just meat. _

 

_ Just meat. _

 

**_Just meat._ **

 

**_JUST—_ **

 

“Jesse!”

 

Jesse’s head snaps up and he’s still in Reyes’s lap but his face is being cupped and Reyes is sitting up with him and he can’t breathe.  He tries to heave in air but his lungs stutter and he can’t— he can’t fucking breathe, holy shit he can’t—

 

“Jesse, Jesse look at me, okay, look at me,” and Jesse  _ is _ looking at him but he’s not seeing much of anything, “We’re going to breathe together, alright?”

 

Jesse tries to say okay, sure, sounds like a great idea, but his whole torso, his whole damn body, is shaking with his choking gasps.  So he tries to nod, tries to do anything, really, but Reyes just pulls his head down into his chest, under his chin, and Jesse grips at his shirt with knuckles whiter than bone.

 

“In and out, kid, just like me,” Reyes says, and his voice is a rumble that Jesse can feel under his hands.  The man breathes deep and Jesse tries to follow — his brow rests on the shelf of Reyes’s collar bone and it rises with every breath.  Up and down, in and out, just like he said, and it helps, it does, but what cracks through the ice-sheet of Jesse’s panic is his heartbeat.

 

It’s too fast.

 

It goes _thump thump thump_ in Reyes’s chest like speeding traffic, like the kick of an assault rifle.  And it only slows once Jesse starts sucking his lungs full of air. 

 

“There you go,” Reyes says, and his voice is just as steady as it always is.  He’s solid under Jesse’s hands, under his forehead, squeezed between his thighs.  But, God, his heart. Jesse wonders how fast it’d go if Jesse just kept choking on his own tongue, how fast it’d be once he started turning purple, then blue.

 

It makes him want to apologize.  Sorry for worrying you, sorry for scaring the shit out of you.  But he just keeps breathing instead, closes his eyes, starts to melt into Reyes’s body like wax.

 

And he’s exhausted.  It crashes into him all at once, and whatever fight was left in him, whatever strength he still had, goes running out of him in a gush.

 

He goes utterly limp in his commanding officer’s lap and he feels pathetic.

 

His fucking head hurts.

 

“M’ fuckin’ head hurts,” he says, slurred and strained.  

 

Reyes starts to move under him, and Jesse really just doesn’t want him to, but he lets himself  be manhandled out of Reyes’s lap. He stretches out on the bed and turns onto his belly, watches with half his face pressed into a pillow as Reyes moves into Jesse’s tiny kitchenette.  He hears the faucet running, a clink of glass, and Reyes returns with a cup of water. Jesse’s not surprised when he finds his aspirin on the first try — in the bedside drawer, between a box of condoms and a bottle of Hoppe’s.

 

“Sit up,” Reyes says, and Jesse does.

 

He swallows down three little blue pills and drains the water.  There's no coaster on the nightstand so when Reyes takes the glass, he puts it on the floor.

 

“Think you can sleep?” Reyes asks.

 

“It ain't even that late,” Jesse replies, but it might as well be.  He feels like he could yawn any second.

 

“Try.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Reyes doesn't ask if Jesse wants him to stay, probably because he knows that Jesse’d say yes.

 

———

 

He doesn't dream that night, or the next, or even for the rest of the week.

 

But Amari comes over the weekend, and she brings Fareeha with her.

 

Fareeha isn't small, or pink, and she’d probably jump into a pit of spiders before she wore her hair in pigtails, but she hugs Jesse tight around the middle when she sees him, and he feels his smile start to shake.

 

He sweats through his sheets that night.

 

He wakes up shouting on the next.

 

And on the third, Reyes shakes him awake.

 

His first instinct is to throw his elbows out, try to protect himself from his attacker, because he is being attacked, isn't he?  But Reyes gets his arms around him and holds him still, holds him close, and that's when Jesse really loses his shit.

 

It's like a flip has been switched inside his head, and all he can think is that he failed to save that little girl.  He  _ failed  _ and now she's fucking  _ dead _ , and he’s sobbing before he's actually crying.

 

It’s snotty, messy, and he turns into Reyes’s chest and curls up as best he can, and between his sobs he thinks about what a fucking child he is.

 

But Reyes holds him and lets him cry and pulls him in close and rests his chin in Jesse’s hair.  He strokes his back while Jesse gasps and cries and soaks his shirt.

 

“You're okay, Jesse,” he says, whispers it right into Jesse’s hair, “You're alright.”

 

Then Reyes says, “I’m not goin’ anywhere, just get it out, kid,” and Jesse gives up on trying to rein himself in.

 

He cries into Reyes’s shoulder until he's wrung himself dry of tears, and then cries a little more.  He doesn't know how long they've been there, wrapped around one another, but the wet spot in Reyes’s shirt is big and dark and clearly visible in the semi-dark.  He doesn’t want to move, so he doesn’t. He lets Reyes hold him, and realizes that he’s shaking in the man’s arms, just a little.

 

“She died,” he says, but it comes out like a whimper, like a whine.

 

“I know,” Reyes says.

 

“I coulda saved her.”

 

“Don’t do that, Jess,” Reyes’s voice is softer than he’s maybe ever heard.  He presses a kiss into the crown of Jesse’s head, and Jesse wonders why it calms him down as much as it does.  “You did everything you were supposed to do.”

 

“Wasn’t enough.”

 

Reyes sighs, “Nothing would have been.”

 

Jesse closes his eyes and he knows he’s right.  He wishes he wasn’t.

 

“Will I be okay?” Jesse asks, and he doesn’t really know where that came from.  Will he be okay? Of course he will.

 

“Course you will.”

 

And then Jesse thinks, “Are you okay?”  Jesus, he’s such a fucking kid.

 

He feels Reyes smile into his hair, “I’m fine, Jesse.”

 

Jesse wishes he hadn’t cried.  He wishes he hadn’t bawled his fucking eyes out.  His nose is stuffed up and there’s an ache in the back of his head, but he feels small and safe in the dark.  He moves in Reyes’s arms and Reyes shifts to accommodate him.

 

Jesse looks up at him and he looks as tired as Jesse feels.  Jesse wants to kiss him.

 

But he doesn’t ask if he can, and he doesn’t say he’s going to.

 

Instead he breathes, “Gabriel,” and Reyes is the one who kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> critiques & corrections are greatly appreciated. plz yell at me if u find a typo.  
> thanks for reading.


End file.
